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Marley was dead, to begin with. Seven years dead, though slightly less dead than the proverbial door-nail, coffin-nail, or any other sort of ironmongery. That was a turn of events that neither Scrooge nor anyone of his acquaintance, though to be sure there were few people who would claim to be of Scrooge's acquaintance, could have predicted, for those things that are cold in the ground, and what's more, were of the coldest sort before they were buried, have the inertial tendency to remain where they were laid to rest.
Not so with Marley, who visited Scrooge's rooms in the dead of winter, in the dead of night, when Scrooge was in the dead of sleep. Which, should Scrooge have at that point stopped and contemplated the convergence of mortal imagery, he might have entertained the notion of it being, in fact, exactly the sort of time that invited the dead.
Scrooge would know Marley's grimace anywhere though his visage was now worm-eaten, thus becoming attractive to another living thing only in death. He well knew when Marley's unrelenting gaze was upon him, even though Marley himself no longer possessed eyes with which to gaze. He even imagined he could smell the festering miasma of Marley’s breath, hot upon his cheek.
These has been Marley’s rooms once, from the boot-blackened floors to the austere moldings and every plaster wall in between, each of which now felt so near that Scrooge might imminently be smothered by musty curtains before this creature, this thing that must once have been Marley, could draw closer still.
He clutched his bedding to his throat, bedding which had also been the possession of one Mr. Marley some seven years gone, thus granting Scrooge the momentary fear that Marley had returned from his final resting place for the sole purpose of calling out Scrooge as a thief. There were a great many adjectives, adverbs, and other assorted descriptive pejoratives that could be used against Scrooge, but thief was not among them.
“You,” said the creature once known as Marley, the words creaking through a throat that was more leather than flesh. It lifted a finger that was even bonier in death than it had been in life and fixed its tip in the direction of Scrooge’s cringing face. “You, Ebenezer Scrooge, are a covetous, old fool!”
"It speaks!" said Scrooge, to the room about him rather than to the Marley-creature who felt miserably, impossibly close, as though he were real and Scrooge were awake and they once again shared the same air.
Dust fell from its lips as they moved, and the mechanism of sound that one could normally only witness in surgeon's diagrams or at the crude public spectacle of dissection was plainly visible through the mouse-eaten holes in his throat. His emaciated form was wrapped round with chains and locks, not as if trying to bind the beast but as if he carried around with him the weight of his office, those oft-counted and well-protected treasurers he so valued for so long as he had been partnered with Scrooge.
"I speak only in truths," said Marley, "for in this unlife after death there is little to be gained in speaking anything else."
"One would think there would be little to be gained in speaking at all," said Scrooge, though he cringed at the back of his bed, still in his nightclothes, and did not welcome the Marley-creature any closer. "Once we pass, so does our right to pass judgment on the world."
"Judgment is exactly what you should be worried about, Ebenezer," said Marley, and lost a piece of ear as though he had strained the rotting bits of it just a hair too much in listening intently to what Scrooge had to say; though to speak of hairs, there went a good few of them now following the ear-piece to Scrooge's floor. “For judgment will come, and it will not come lightly upon you.”
“I will not succumb to the conscience of others intruding upon my sleep,” said Scrooge. “You echo the words of the cheesemonger, the apothecary, the clergyman upon his doorstep. These words that follow me in my waking hours will not be the stuff my dreams are made on.”
“I am no nightmare, Ebenezer Scrooge!”
And Scrooge felt the bones of Marley’s hand close around his wrist, the rotting fabric of his cuff brush against his forearm, the dessicated remains of flesh that clung to his hand scratching at Scrooge’s tender skin. He jerked his arm away only to rattle the bones of Marley’s own and quickly be stilled.
“You are no apparition! No spirit!”
Marley’s corpse was as solid as Scrooge’s nightstand, his bedposts, his body as real as Scrooge’s own, now held prisoner in Marley’s deathly grasp.
“A spirit moves these old bones,” said Marley. “I am now a blight upon this earth and a horror to any who witness my presence. I have no peace, no rest, and no respite. I shall wander this earth until my bones are ground to dust, and even then may I further travel stuck under the boot of what was once my fellow man.”
“Unhand me!” said Scrooge, but his voice shook and the command had no teeth.
“I am your future, Ebenezer Scrooge,” said Marley, making a calamitous noise with his fettering chains, a performance for an audience of one. “Look well upon it. Feel the unbearable presence you will one day possess. Smell the stench of your own demise.”
“Imminent demise?”
“Mend your ways, lest this come to pass.”
Marley let go of his wrist, and Scrooge examined the marks there as though he could read his future in them. Perhaps he could, if there were any truth to Marley’s words, but they too felt like echoes of words from his waking life, the opinions of the common folk who kept traditions Scrooge wanted no part of. These traditions too were anathema to Scrooge.
“There is still hope for you,” said Marley, as though that were a thing that Scrooge believed in or asked of him. “You can still mend your ways.”
“My ways need no mending,” said Scrooge. “Do I not perform my duties? Do I not pay my taxes and observe the laws? My ways are my own.”
“Your ways have more sway than you know,” said Marley, “for while you live inside this box inside a vault inside a mausoleum where you keep your thoughts, your memories, and your treasures, your choices still affect the world.”
“So much the better,” said Scrooge, “for many man would be better off if they did not so actively meddle in the lives of others. Let them be alone with their thoughts and me with mine.”
“We are made to meddle,” said Marley, leaning in so close Scrooge could see an unholy kind of light deep within him, so near that Scrooge feared another bit of flesh might fall and this time hit his face, his lips. “And if I only meddle now in the days beyond my twilight, let this itself be your lesson. There is still time for you.”
“There would still be time whether you were here or not,” said Scrooge, with a voice he backed with all the nerve that remained in him. “I know not how you passed into these chambers, but you might go back the way you came and bother another. Leave me to my sleep!”
“Listen well,” said Marley, “for moments from now I will go forth and I will continue my shamble through the world, and moments after that you will return to your rest, but your chance still awaits you. You will be visited by three spirits.”
“Bah,” said Scrooge. “Humbug. I have no congress with spirits, present company notwithstanding.”
“Expect the first this very night, when the bell tolls one.”
“It will find no welcome here!” said Scrooge. “Do not set your peers upon me to finish what you have started, for if you cannot persuade me from this path we once shared than no other ought dare.”
“This very night,” Marley said again. “And the others forthwith. Heed them, Ebenezer.”
The sound of shaking lockboxes and rattling chains was not, this time, the result of a great fury consuming Marley, but of his lean and rotting body turning away from Scrooge, showing his rat-eaten scalp and weatherworn cloak barely draping a torso that itself was hardly there.
Scrooge squeezed his eyes closed and listened as the shambling body left his chambers, as the lock returned to its original condition, and the scent of death dissipated from his rooms through the open window. An opening which Scrooge remedied the moment he dared leave his bedsheets again.
When he returned he pulled those bedsheets up close and pressed some cotton into his ears and when the bells tolled one in their heavy, ominous way, Scrooge heard nothing at all.
And indeed, history may tell that a lesson taught by three spirits might have better served the hard-hearted Scrooge then the one he learned here, for ever after he in fact relished the moment his mortal remains might emerge from the earth like Marley’s to be a blight everything he touched. It was far more palatable to be like Marley than be visited by Marley, after all.
Eternal rest had never been Scrooge’s ambition, and the list of those who vexed him was long.